SHE

Shoals of hair, coil on coil,

Salmon cheeks, walnut eyes,
Fair of face as the planter’s daughter
Even Aphrodite sighs.

Never learned how to frown,
Mocked misery at the gate
Calls the sun to rise each morning
With smile no queen can imitate.

Wise beyond her tender years
Inbuilt instinct for the game
Of otherness of other people 
Of sameness of the same.

Parents have no claim on her
One off child of grace
Heart of gold, soul of silk,
Sister bright of stars in space.

I recall the magic of tongue
I remember the lip and the cup
She taught me all I know of life
And that water never flows up.

And she believes in life and love
And the power of absolute trust,
Yet still she factors in the fact
That an iron gate is the promise of rust.

TALAMH.

 
 
 Land, first born of the first born,

Here before us, here without us, alone.

The ancient eye of landscape watched our coming

patiently, through pebble, boulder and stone.

Land gave us whereness and temporary roots,

Foundation for our frailty and need,

In return we gave her rape, ruin and pillage

To power our engine of greed.

Mother of meteor, father of fossil,

Vulnerable to religion’s daughter,

Silent parchment of all commandments,

Her message is ferried by breeze and water.

Rock and mountain, grain of sand,

Ledge and ravine has soul.

Intruder man knows lesser Gods,

Lesser than her grounded mole.

What is ‘here’ or ‘there’ without the land?

Where is home and away?

Every place is where she leaves us,

Allows us to come or stay.

Birds and beasts her allies,

Seas and mountains her stores,

Trees and rivers her jewels,

Etna and Vesuvius her pores.

Man, an earthen vessel himself,

Self proclaimed Lord of all,

Stone, the ultimate conclusion,

Certainty, the coming of another fall.

Ever changing skin of vegetation and colour

Every heartbeat an ever filling glass,

Earth, mantle of our useless bones,

Secure in the knowledge, ‘these too will pass’.

 

(Talamh is the Irish word for earth or ground. The only truly solid element)

 

 

UISCE

Water, liquefied air grounded by gravity 

Far greater Leveller than even Shirley’s Death,
Dew in the morning, fog in the evening,
Translucent halo of angel’s breath.
Binding member of eternal elements,
Ancient conversations with the stone,
Tears of the earth, border of life and death
Life that can live alone.
 
 
At the wedding feast of Cana
The host was mute and hushed,
Then the humble water met the Lords gaze
And the humble water blushed.
Since baptism in Jordan’s river,
Since Ararat of two by two, 
There’s no will but the water’s will
The white swell and the blue.

 

The well connects the darkness and the light,
The seaside ties the water to the land,
The river joins the country and the ocean
And rain provides the life in everyman.
Ice, the surgeon with eternal scalpel
Carved each valley, glacier, river bed,
Elusive mist, cloak of every mountain,
Snow, a scarf for headstones of our dead.
 

 

Water, first mirror of the universe,
Never strays outside its own desire,
Tide, slave mistress of the moon,
Diviner of thirst; of flame, a sole defier.
The first swim of this life
In amniotic whirlpool of the womb,
The last swim of this life
In all embracing moisture of the tomb.

 

Uisce, (Irish word for water) is the most obviously visible

of all the Classic elements. Treasured more than its brothers
and sisters it is widely regarded as the source of all life.
But it cannot work in isolation!